/Defund Culture/ is now out, published by mediastudies.press:
https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal
It's available open access, under the CC4r: Collective Conditions for
Re-Use commitment, so please feel free to share widely.
The abstract and contents are provided below.
Best wishes as always, Gary
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Gary Hall,/Defund Culture: A Radical Proposal
<https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal> - Why
the Arts Are So White, Male and Middle-Class and What We Can Do About It/
https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal
Calls to expand public investment in the arts often treat the existing
cultural and institutional landscape as a given. /Defund Culture/
challenges this assumption, asking instead what kinds of culture are
being supported, through which institutions, and to whose benefit.
In pursuing these questions, the book turns attention to the structural
inequalities that shape Britain’s creative and intellectual life.
Drawing on critical theory, political philosophy, and cultural policy,
Hall shows how the dominance of white, male, middle- and upper-class
voices in the arts, media, and academy is sustained through longstanding
funding arrangements and institutional hierarchies. Expanding access
within this system (e.g. through social mobility initiatives)—however
well intentioned—will not, on its own, produce structural change.
Rather than offering a programme of reform, /Defund Culture/ explores
what it might mean to disinvest from cultural institutions as they
currently operate. Taking cues from abolitionist calls to defund the
police, Hall proposes redistributing resources away from elite
institutions and toward more collective, commons-oriented, and radically
relational alternatives grounded in redistribution, institutional
transformation, and epistemic pluriversality.
The book is published by mediastudies.press, and is available online and
as a free download in PDF and ePub, on a CC4r: Collective Conditions for
Re-Use basis. A paperback version is also available.
https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal
A response to /Defund Culture/ by Roger Malina is also available as:
Roger Malina, 'Defunding, Activating, and the Afterlives of Culture: On
Gary Hall’s /Defund Culture/ and /Activating Fluxus, Expanding
Conservation/, eds Hanna Hölling, Aga Wielocha, and Josephine Ellis':
http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2026/1/22/defunding-activating-and-the-afterlives-of-culture-roger-mal.html
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Contents
Preamble
PART 1: WHY THE ARTS ARE SO WHITE, MALE, AND MIDDLE-CLASS
Chapter One: The Culture Wars and Attack on the Arts
Chapter Two: Culture Must Be Defunded
Chapter Three: Culture in Ruins: "Are We the Bad Guys?"
PART 2: AND HERE’S SOME OF THE THINGS WE CAN DO ABOUT IT
Chapter Four: Culture and the University as White, Male, Public Space
Chapter Five: De-Liberalizing Culture and Theory
Chapter Six: Coda
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About mediastudies.press
mediastudies.press <https://www.mediastudies.press/> is a scholar-led,
nonprofit, diamond open access publisher in the media, film, and
communication studies fields.
You can learn more about mediastudies.press, including their operations
and OA principles, on their site:
https://www.mediastudies.press/about <https://www.mediastudies.press/about>
The press is a member of the Open Book Collective
<https://openbookcollective.org/packages/2/info/> and the ScholarLed
<https://scholarled.org/> consortium, and also publishes the History of
Media Studies journal. Please contact them at [email protected].
--
Gary Hall
Professor of Media
Coventry University
Director of Open Humanities Press:http://www.openhumanitiespress.org
Blog:http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/
Latest:
Book: Defund Culture: A Radical
Proposal:https://www.mediastudies.press/defund-culture-a-radical-proposal
Recommended: Robot Review of Books #17 I’m Like a PDF But a Girl: Girlblogging as a
Nomadic Pedagogy by Ester Freider; #18 & #19 On Giving Up by Adam
Phillips:https://www.robotreviewofbooks.org/
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